President Barack Obama has inserted authorization for his long desired wireless spectrum auction into American Jobs Act. (Source: Newscom)

The auction would allow TV broadcasters to sell unused spectrum to wireless carriers, splitting the profits with the government. Wireless carriers could then use the spectrum to speed up smart phone connections. (Source: Backpack Tactics)

The government would use its earnings to create an emergency broadcast Wi-Fi network to be used by firefighters and police during emergencies. (Source: Corbis)

Spectrum sale would eventually boost 4G speeds and coverage, fund a national emergency Wi-Fi network

Sneaky,
sneaky -- remember U.S. President Barack Obama's big American Jobs Act, which he was plugging
before the NFL season opener last Thursday? Well, the proposed
legislation was released Monday and it included a little something extra --
proposed authorization for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to hold a special
wireless spectrum auction, something President Obama has long been pushing.

Telecommunications companies like Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), AT&T, Inc. (T), and Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) have been pushing for this auction for a long
time. They warn that they're running out of spectrum to deploy faster 4G
wireless connections. Meanwhile, they point out that many TV broadcasters
are sitting on large unused chunks of spectrum.

The auction would likely be held sometime early next year and would be an
incentive-based auction. TV broadcasters would not be required to
participate, but those who do would split the profits of sales of their unused
spectrum with the government.

A handful of TV broadcasters are excited about the potential revenue from the
option. But a noisy contingent has protested the auction. They
claim that the FCC has not sufficiently considered interference that use of the
spectrum for wireless devices might cause. Thus they argue that their
fellow broadcasters should not be allowed to
sell their spectrum, and the auction should be scrapped.

The proposed spectrum auction has largely stalled thus far due to these
protests. Now it may finally advance.

The network was first proposed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of
2001 after emergency responders struggled to communicate with each other in the
chaotic aftermath. In early 2009, at the start of Obama's presidency an
auction looked to create a public/private partnership to fund the network.
However, the auction failed due to lack of interest.

If the new plan succeeds, a 10 MHz block of the 700 MHz band -- the so-called
"D-Block – would be applied to building the new network. The
majority of funding would go towards building physical wireless networking
infrastructure into most major U.S. cities and securing the resulting network.

In his letter to Congress, Obama promotes the act, but doesn't spend much time
specifically promoting the auction provision. He writes:

To create jobs, I am submitting the American Jobs Act of 2011 --
nearly all of which is made up of the kinds of proposals supported by both
Republicans and Democrats, and that the Congress should pass right away to get
the economy moving now. The purpose of the American Jobs Act of 2011 is simple:
put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working
Americans.

However, he faces resistance in the House and Senate from his Republican
rivals. Representative Eric Cantor, the Republican party House Majority
Leader, writes:

What Washington needs and what the American people need is for us
to find some agreement and there are plenty of things we can agree on. For
instance, on the need for infrastructure spending, we believe that states have
monies right now, but Washington has tied up their ability to use those monies.
We want to straighten out the system of how money is spent before we start
spending more.

We don't support the idea of creating a Fannie and Freddie for roads and
bridges in an infrastructure bank. We believe that you can facilitate a better
flow of funds to construction projects by fixing the current system. There's
plenty for us to work on together. Instead of trying to accentuate where
differences are, because good people can disagree, let's try to produce results
so the middle class can get back to work in this country.

Like the President, most Republican rivals haven't directly commented on the
auction and emergency network deployment plans (though Rep. Cantor's comment
seems to allude to the latter deployment).

Thus the fate of President Obama's latest effort to push through the
incentive-auction of unused TV spectrum largely rests on his ability to sell
the Jobs Act as a whole.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

I'm assuming that's just poor reporting (again); and that it's the same basic idea that they tried to sell in the last 700MHZ auction: a 4G service where emergency responders get priority over anyone else using the bandwidth, with the exception that as a dedicated govt funded network there won't be consumer devices sharing it.